The present invention relates to a semiconductor manufacturing apparatus data acquisition apparatus for acquiring process data from a semiconductor manufacturing apparatus and a semiconductor manufacturing system.
A production management system manages a semiconductor device manufacturing plan, and the semiconductor manufacturing apparatus manufactures semiconductor devices in accordance with the instruction of the plan. The production management system sends a request representing necessary data of all the process data to the semiconductor manufacturing apparatus. In response to this request, the semiconductor manufacturing apparatus outputs the requested process data, and a data acquisition apparatus acquires the necessary data.
The semiconductor manufacturing apparatus and the production management system are connected via the data acquisition apparatus and can exchange data with each other. In a situation in which the semiconductor manufacturing apparatus and the production management system are on-line connected to allow data communication between them, the data acquisition apparatus can acquire the process data output from the semiconductor manufacturing apparatus.
However, at the time of installing and starting the semiconductor manufacturing apparatus, for example, the semiconductor manufacturing apparatus often operates standalone and is not on-line connected to the production management system. In this case, no data communication is done between the semiconductor manufacturing apparatus and the production management system. The production management system cannot send an instruction requesting specific process data to the semiconductor manufacturing apparatus. Therefore, the data acquisition apparatus cannot acquire any process data.
When an apparatus recipe is not confirmed in advance, no data communication is done with the production management system. The semiconductor manufacturing apparatus often operates off-line.
Under these circumstances, no data communication is done between the semiconductor manufacturing apparatus and the production management system, and no data acquisition is possible.
A reference disclosing a technique pertaining to conventional semiconductor manufacturing apparatus data acquisition will be given below.
Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2006-93641